There are six major actions that need to be in place in order to achieve significant improvement in an organization’s capability to deliver value quickly. These can be implemented in different ways depending upon the needs and culture of the company. These are:
- Identify and prioritize the work to be done
- Have an effective intake process to avoid pushing too much work onto the development group while ensuring the most important work gets done
- Create clear requirements
- Coordinate the work of the teams
- Teams work together with a common cadence and frequent synchronization
- Core DevOps
Here are the best solutions we’ve found in 20 years:
For number 1, use Minimum Business Increments (MBIs)
For number 2, have a backlog of MBIs for each independent value stream from which work is pulled
For number 3, use Acceptance Test-Driven Development with BDD. This has the added advantage improving code design
Numbers 4 and 5, can be accomplished any number of ways and does not require big room, long term planning.
In number 6, “Core DevOps” means full visibility and coordination between the two groups.
There are a lot of variations into how to solve the above, but each must be done and should usually be done early. Decide on which variation best fits your organization’s needs and culture.
The matrix below shows these 6 actions and what challenges they help solve.
